But as for Sarchimus the Wise, he might have been a man of anywhere from the middle thirties to a well-preserved and youthfully agile fifty; further than that I could not even guess. He seemed to be about in his early forties—but I am only guessing.
How long he had lived here in the Scarlet Pylon I never knew. He was a sober, thoughtful man—an intellectual, virtually a sage or a philosopher—and something of a combination of magician and scientist. There were, as I soon came to suspect, other savants of his mysterious calling who shared the deserted and ruined metropolis with us, but these he thought of as rivals and enemies, and they dwelt apart from each other in scrupulously maintained privacy in what amounted to nothing less than a state of continuously alert armed truce.
But more on this subject later.
He was a somber, solemn, incommunicative man, this Sarchimus my master, and I saw little of him once my convalescence was done and I had regained my health to such a degree as to be able to get around by myself and to tend to my own needs. Aloof and inscrutable, dwelling far apart from my own quarters in apartments of his own, we had little or nothing to do with each other, at least in the beginning. And while the boy Karn could not help feeling a tingle of superstitious awe and primal fear in the presence of the mysterious “magician”—as he thought of Sarchimus—I, a civilized American, thought of him as a sort of scientist or scholar and was eager to converse with him on an equal level as an adult. For I understood at least the rudiments of the science I saw about me, and would have questioned him from a level of scientific knowledge that would probably have startled him and aroused his suspicions—for such advanced knowledge would have surprised him, coming from an untutored wild boy of the forest.
For this reason, then, it is perhaps well that I saw so little of him and that our paths crossed but seldom.
The Dead City of Sotaspra in which the science magician had made his home had been emptied or abandoned ages before, as could have been guessed by the extent of its decay. But obviously, in its prime, it had been the cradle of a superior civilization. In fact—as I soon had reason to suspect—the Sotaspran civilization had been a remarkably advanced culture, which had progressed far beyond the present state of the other cities of this planet which I had visited or heard of during my previous venture here. The skysled which flew by riding magnetic currents was an example of the heights to which Sotaspran science had attained before its mysterious eclipse, as was the crystal blasting-spear with which Sarchimus had slain the scorpion monster. This particular weapon was called the zoukar, by the way.
Sarchimus was not, of course, a Sotaspran by birth, for the city was uninhabited, save by a few seekers after the lost secrets of its ancient people. He had been born and educated in a distant city whose name I never learned, and his thirst for knowledge had drawn him here as it had drawn his fellow-savants. Entering the Dead City of Sotaspra many years before, Sarchimus had sought out the isolated Scarlet Pylon and had made it his home and a closely-guarded fortress. One by one he had excavated from the ruins the various instruments and vehicles of the lost civilization, had subjected them to intensive study, and had in many cases mastered the secret of their use and revitalized them. But many more instruments remained cryptic and unsolved mysteries to him, and many more secrets were still undiscovered.
That I lived at all in this healthy young body was due entirely to the fact that the healing lamp had been one of the first secrets of the lost science of Sotaspra which he had recovered and mastered. I could not help feeling a certain debt of gratitude to him for thus saving me from an agonizing death, although his reasons for so doing remained unexplained. The impersonal manner in which he regarded me, and the way he remained aloof and apart from me, shunning any closer communion, gave me cause to suspect that his reasons for rescuing Karn the Hunter from death were other than merely altruistic.
At any rate, I had the freedom of the tower, save for certain sections thereof, among which were the private apartments of Sarchimus and his laboratorium, wherein he deposited all his secrets. During the day I was free to come and go as I wished, with few duties which demanded my attention. We ate at different hours, and, although it had been suggested to me that it would be wiser and safer to remain within the Scarlet Pylon itself during the hours of darkness, there were few restrictions placed upon my movements, and little in fact that was actually forbidden me.
As soon as I was able to get around by myself, I began eagerly exploring as much of the Scarlet Pylon as was permitted. I cannot say exactly what I was looking for, but what I desired was some means of ascertaining the position of the Dead City in relation to those few portions of the globe known to me from my former incarnation on this planet as Kyr Chong. I suppose I was unconsciously looking for the Laonese equivalent of a map or atlas or geography book; but whether or not the Sotasprans had actually possessed anything of this nature I could not be certain. There was, you see, no way I could find my path back to where I had left the Princess Niamh unless I could discover where the Dead City was located in relation to the Secret City of the Outlaws. At the very least, I hoped to find the location of Niamh’s city, Phaolon. When last word had come to me of Phaolon, the Jewel City had been in imminent danger of siege by the legions of Ardha, a hostile city. Even if I was unable to find my princess, I could still be of service to her if I could assist in the defense of her kingdom.
Alas, the Sotaspran civilization seemed not to possess maps or atlases. Or, if indeed there were such, they were either not to be found in the Pylon of Sarchimus, or were somehow concealed from random discovery.
Over a period of many days I searched as much of the Pylon of Sarchimus as was not explicitly forbidden to me. Sloping ramps connected the twenty tiers of the crystalline spire, and a veritable labyrinth of apartments, antechambers, and cubicles were to be found on the several floors. Although the tower had either survived the decay of the Dead City in a remarkable state of preservation, or had been thoroughly and laboriously refurbished, few of the various suites were at all furnished and most gaped empty as if abandoned.
The librarium of Sarchimus occupied most of one entire floor. Here, curving walls were lined with shelves which were cumbered by a profusion of folios and librams and volumes of many sizes and description. Never before in my wanderings upon the World of the Green Star had I seen such a collection of books, and had my search been motivated by mere idle curiosity, I could have spent many days happily engaged in exploring this universe of alien literature. As it was, I was eager to be gone from here, anxious to discover some notion of the whereabouts of this city, and fearful to display too obvious an interest in the librarium, which, had he at all noticed it, would perhaps have aroused the suspicions of my master. A savage boy from the wilderness, after all, should not know how to read.
The kind of books made by the Laonese tend toward immense folios. They are very heavy, measuring two or three feet across, and in order to peruse them in comfort you require the services of a lectern. Merely moving them one at a time is a task of considerable labor, and thus, for these reasons, my search of the library of the Ancients was cursory, furtive, and hasty. Moreover, I was ill-equipped for the study of Laonese literature; my education into the language had largely been on the vocal level. Although I had received some tutoring into the written script at the hands of Khin-nom, the old philosopher of Phaolon had been supremely concerned to acquaint me with the spoken language, not the written.